Video: 'Ignore Casey Anthony,' urges ex-prosecutor

Transcript of: 'Ignore Casey Anthony,' urges ex-prosecutor

MATT LAUER, co-host:All right,
let us
begin this half-hour though with the
trial
of
Casey Anthony
. In a moment, we'll speak exclusively to prosecutor
Jeff Ashton
. But first,
NBC
's
Kerry Sanders
has the latest.
Kerry
, good morning.

KERRY SANDERS reporting:Well, good morning,
Matt.
The
trial
of the summer's long over,
Casey Anthony
remains in
Florida
on probation on a check fraud conviction, but there are still so many unanswered questions as to what happened when the cameras were not rolling in the murder case. Now, prosecutor
Jeff Ashton
provides some answers in his book with the title that clearly explains his position. It's called "
Imperfect Justice
." After three years of hearings and a six-week-long
trial
...

Judge BELVIN PERRY:Would the defendant rise?

SANDERS:...a shocking verdict as
Casey Anthony
was acquitted in the murder of her 2-year-old daughter,
Caylee
...

Unidentified Court Spokeswoman:We the jury, find the defendant not guilty.

SANDERS:...and walked free. Now, four months later, prosecutor
Jeff Ashton
, famous for his smirks and his fans, takes us behind the scenes of the investigation into
Caylee Anthony
's disappearance and the murder
trial
that would captivate
America
. In his new book, "Imperfect Justice,"
Ashton
takes us inside what he describes as a highly dysfunctional
Anthony family
, a daughter who told lie upon lie upon lie. A mother, he says, was in denial. A granddaughter he strongly believes was murdered.

Judge PERRY:The legal issue has arisen...

SANDERS:For the first time
, he sheds light on that shocking moment near the end of the
trial
when
Casey
's
defense
team requested a competency hearing to determine their client's sanity.
Ashton
reveals that
defense attorneyCheney Mason
had brought up the subject of a
plea deal
to
Casey
, who appeared almost catatonic. "
Cheney
told us that
Casey
refused to even listen to the idea of a plea. Every time he approached the subject with her, she would look at him blankly, like she didn't know what a plea was.

Judge PERRY:The court will find that the defendant is competent to continue.

SANDERS:Soon after, the case was in the hands of 12 jurors, who
Ashton
alleges were coddled, pampered and unemotional when it came to
Caylee
. "This decision,"
Ashton
writes, "was the work of a jury who didn't believe
Casey
deserved to be punished at all." Jurors would later argue the
state
just didn't provide enough evidence to prove
Casey
's guilt.

SANDERS:Meanwhile,
Casey
remains in
Florida
, serving out her year of probation for writing bad checks. Monthly reports indicate she doesn't have a job or an income and is not attending any classes. And although the
trial
is now a distant memory, a lingering tab.
Casey
still owes the
state
$217,000 for the investigation and search for
Caylee
. Clearly, this is the first time that jurors are hearing of
Ashton
's allegations. We reached out to all of them last night and every one declined

to comment. Matt:All right,
Kerry Sanders
.
Kerry
,
thank you very much
.
Jeff Ashton
was one of the prosecutors in the
Casey Anthonytrial
. He has a

LAUER:Prosecuting
CaseyAnthony
."
Jeff
, good to have you back. Good morning.

new book out today called "Imperfect Justice:Thank you for having me back.

Mr. JEFF ASHTON (Author, "Imperfect Justice: Prosecuting Casey Anthony"):Four months since you heard the words "not guilty" on the most serious charges in this case. Do those words still haunt you?

LAUER:Less so than when I was here before, but I think it still -- it bothers me a bit. You know, writing the book was a good way of getting a lot of that out, but it does.

Mr. ASHTON:Do you still have the second thoughts? Do you go over what you could have done differently, the should have, would have, could have things?

LAUER:You know, there's some small things that I talk about in the book that I wish we'd done differently, but honestly I don't think there's anything that we could have done differently that would have made a difference from what, you know, my impression from what the jurors have said. It seems like to them, it was simply the evidence that we had.

Mr. ASHTON:Well, let's talk about the jury. You say they were coddled, that they were pampered. You write that "This decision was the work of a jury who believed she didn't deserve to be punished at all."

LAUER:Right.

Mr. ASHTON:Was it the jury's fault?

LAUER:Well, I don't know that you can say fault. I mean, the jurors heard the instructions that the judge gave them, and those instructions give jurors a lot of latitude in deciding what's a
reasonable doubt
or what isn't. And this jury decided that there were reasonable doubts. Obviously I don't agree, but that was their decision.

Mr. ASHTON:One of the main criticisms I've heard about you and your team,
Jeff
, was that you reached too far, that this was a high-profile death penalty case, and as a result, those 12 jurors needed a "
CSI
" moment, and from my generation, a "
Perry Mason
" moment.

LAUER:Right.

Mr. ASHTON:They needed a smoking gun that said she killed this little girl and here's how she did it, and you didn't come close to providing that.

LAUER:Well, we couldn't provide the jury with sort of clear evidence on a silver platter of exactly how
Caylee
died. What we felt we had done though, was to have excluded everything but homicide and really, you know,
the burden of proof
on the
state
isn't necessarily to prove exactly how the homicide was committed but simply that it was committed. But again, you know, the jury set the burden where they wanted to, and that's the verdict that they came up with.

Mr. ASHTON:This possible
plea deal
that eventually
Casey
had no reaction to...

LAUER:Right.

Mr. ASHTON:...you would not agree to that unless you were told as part of that what happened to
Caylee
, correct?

LAUER:Well, there were two aspects to it. One was that she could plead to second-degree murder without allocution and receive a sentence of like 30 years in prison, I believe it was. The other offer was to allow her to plead to the lesser crime, the aggravated manslaughter, if the truth about how
Caylee
died, you know, justified that offense. So that was where we would have required her to make an allocution that was truthful that we would believe before we would consider that.

Mr. ASHTON:She never took the stand in her own
defense
, so nobody from the prosecution team ever got a chance to cross-examine her.

LAUER:No.

Mr. ASHTON:If I am
Casey Anthony
and you are the guy who got to do that cross-examination, what would be the one most important question you'd want to ask me?

LAUER:I think if I only had one, it would be what does
Bella Vita
mean to you? The one of the great issues that was never explained, and to me, was the clearest expression of the reason for this murder was the tattoo. Now, your daughter is missing or dead for three weeks and you get a tattoo that says "Bella Vita." I would love to hear the explanation of that. I know we heard one from the psychiatrist that seemed pretty laughable, but I'd love to hear her say it.

Mr. ASHTON:She was found not guilty and yet she's been convicted in the court of public opinion, she's been vilified, she is living in hiding, for the most part.
It's hard
to imagine that she'll be able to hold down a job or live a normal life. Is that justice?

LAUER:You know, there's justice in the court and then there's a larger sense of justice, you know. I would hope that people leave
Casey Anthony
alone. I don't want anyone to do anything to
Casey
or to have anything to do with her. My advice to people who are angry about this is to ignore
Casey
.
And I
hope that's what they do. I hope that someday, and I know this probably won't happen, the name
Casey Anthony
will invoke a "who's that?" But I doubt that will ever happen.

Found not guilty of murdering her daughter Caylee, Casey Anthony now serves out a year’s probation on an unrelated charge in Florida. But an Anthony prosecutor who remains convinced of her guilt says in a perfect world, Anthony’s real sentence will be fading into obscurity.

Speaking with Matt Lauer on TODAY Tuesday, retired prosecutor Jeff Ashton said his wish is for the public to turn a blind eye to the woman front in center in what was called “The Trial of the Century.”

“You know, there’s justice in the court, and then there’s a larger sense of justice,” Ashton told Lauer. “I would hope that people leave Casey Anthony alone; I don’t want anyone to do anything to Casey or to have anything to do with her.

“My advice to people who are angry about (her acquittal) is to ignore Casey, and I hope that’s what they do. I hope that someday — and I know this probably won’t happen — that Casey Anthony will invoke a “who’s that?’"

The former Florida assistant state attorney Ashton talked to Lauer about his new book “Imperfect Justice,” out in bookstores today, in which he gives a prosecutor’s perspective on the case, and minces no words in blasting Anthony and her defense team. In the book, he calls the defense’s trial arguments “a complete crock of crap” and said he believes Anthony blatantly lied in telling psychiatrists that her father George had molested her and that he had killed Caylee by drowning her.

Anthony was found not guilty of murder, aggravated child abuse and manslaughter July 5 at the close of a sensational, six-week trial that saw more than 100 witnesses — but never Anthony herself — take the stand. The verdict came some 1,085 days after Casey’s mother Cindy called 911 to report her nearly 3-year-old granddaughter Caylee missing in July 2008.

While jurors, who deliberated just 11 hours before returning the not guilty verdict, have said the prosecution failed to build a compelling case on exactly how Caylee Anthony died, Ashton told TODAY he believes he and his fellow prosecutors “excluded everything but homicide.”

“We couldn’t provide the jury with clear evidence on a silver platter of exactly how Caylee died,” he said. “Really, the burden of proof on the state isn’t necessarily to prove exactly how the homicide was committed but simply that it was committed.”

Ashton said he would have relished having Anthony take the stand and having the opportunity to ask her about the “Bella Vita” tattoo she had inked on her shoulder only weeks after she said Caylee had gone missing. “Bella Vita” means “beautiful life” in Italian.

“I think if I only had one (question), it would be, ‘What does Bella Vita mean to you?’ “Ashton said. “One of the great issues that was never explained and to me, (and) was the clearest expression of the reason for the murder, was the tattoo.

Casey Anthony prosecutor Jeff Ashton told TODAY he would like to hear Anthony explain this shoulder tattoo, which means "Beautiful Life." She got it weeks after she said her daughter disappeared.

“You know, your daughter is missing or dead for three weeks and you get a tattoo that says Bella Vita? I would love to hear the explanation for that.”

In his 322-page book, Ashton writes that late in the trial, Anthony’s attorneys approached the prosecution about a plea deal, and they, believing the jury would not convict Anthony on a death penalty, offered two options: A second degree murder plea without allocution into how Caylee actually died, or a possible manslaughter charge with Anthony fully coming clean on what she knew. While her lawyers approached Anthony about pleading guilty to a lesser charge, she refused to even listen to a deal.

In his interview with Lauer, Ashton said he has largely come to terms with the not guilty verdict, even while he remains convinced of Anthony’s guilt. He conceded that “there (are) some small things…that I wish we had done differently,” but “the jury decided that there was reasonable doubt. Obviously, I don’t agree, but that was their decision.”

In his book, Ashton directs most of his vitriol toward Anthony’s defense team, calling Anthony a liar and saying “in many ways, I think the defense came to mirror the client they represented.”

Of Anthony’s attorney Jose Baez, Ashton writes, “There is an unearned air of arrogance about the man that is incredibly frustrating to witness. The word I used in describing Jose is smarmy; somebody who is slick, underhanded and doesn’t shoot straight.”

He also writes he hoped attorney Cheney Mason being later added to Anthony’s defense team “would class up the defense team tactics,” but instead, “Baez seemed to bring Cheney down to his (level).”

In a statement published by the London Daily Mail, Baez responded to Ashton’s characterization of him, saying, “I am both surprised and somewhat disappointed he has chosen to attack me on a personal level.”

In a highly-anticipated speech to Congress Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu argued that a potential nuclear deal being negotiated by major powers including the United States "paves Iran's path to the bomb."